Minutiae Of An Unlife
by coeur de lyon
Summary: Some silences overflow with what we don't say. Maybe that's why they'd stopped trying. AU SasukexItachi Angsty to a tee. Rating applies.


**_Minutiae Of An Unlife_**

Gare de Lyon

_For Juliet, Stepan, and Magdalena. For Josh, and for his brother._

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

_Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt __-- __These are the tears of things, and our mortality cuts to the heart._ (Virgil)

"We're out of eggs." Itachi tells him.

Sasuke pretends that he hasn't heard, just to see if Itachi will repeat himself when confronted with an indifferent 'pardon?'

He doesn't.

Sasuke doesn't eat eggs. Doesn't like them. Never has. Eggs connote bad things for him, memories of trucker stops and running away, and away again. Of wide streets where there are houses but no people. Of gasoline rainbows and other children being scared of him. Of dumpsters to hide in from old men.

He pours himself a bowl of cereal, goes to flick on the kettle, but Itachi is already there.

"Here, I made you some."

He looks into the proferred cup, at the tea leaves compounded into a strainer many times too small. He thanks Itachi and then he waits for him to sit down.

Both affect not to notice the clump of jasmine in the sink; it's the thought that counts, right?

_He remembers that jasmine creepers are soft to sleep on in the summertime, and only children are light enough, and only children can climb up fences and walls (there is competition for pineneedles)_

_And quardle oodle ardle wardle doodle the Magpies said_

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Itachi looks…different in his work clothes. Gone are the jeans and sloppy Pearl Jam teeshirts Sasuke is used to, replaced by shirts so soft he wants to press them to his cheek. But they hide history scars, and he doesn't want to see those, either. As Itachi brushes past him in the hallway and Sasuke tingles at the touch of cashmere against his towel-clad form, he finds there is a memory lurking, for the accompanying linger of cologne.

_Because cologne, of most smells, lingers. And even though the clothes are clean now, because the red is drycleaned away, Sasuke throws them away, which is such a pity, but can't be helped. His favourite stripy shorts and the batman teeshirt are permeated by the old money (old blood) smell of irony, that no amount of jeyes will lift. The home of compassion look the other way when he takes clothes from the alms box._

"A new restaurant's just opened. Its supposed to be good. I was thinking we could go."

Itachi doesn't mean for it to be posed as a question, but his brother doesn't pretend that it isn't one.

"I've got exams." He says.

Itachi nods.

"Afterwards, then."

Sasuke nods.

Remember when we were young? He wants to say. Remember how you told me to go get some food from anywhere I wanted, anywhere at all, because you gave me a spare buck, and I went into that ritzy place? Remember how they chased me out? But he doesn't ask, because he knows that Itachi can't remember when that happened. Because Itachi wasn't there, in the strictest sense of the word. Not there at all.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

One night while Sasuke is studying, Itachi gets a phone call. Sasuke hears (but he doesn't. He is listening, whole body tensed to what Itachi does, in the apartment that is so airy and beautiful that he can't stand it, because Bad Things happen to beauty, and he is always on guard) Itachi swearing, and then Itachi is there.

"Sasuke, listen." He says. "I'm going to have to leave you for a couple of weeks. I got a gig in Paris, and…hell, it's Paris." Sasuke nods. He says he gets it.

(Because he does. Itachi has broken this promise more times than he wants to count. )

He gets a taxi to the airport, and Sasuke makes sure that he is in the shower when his brother shuts the door behind him. But, like Orpheus, he goes to the window. He looks down and sees the cab top, and sees his brother (small enough to hold in his hand) run to it with a kind of grace, and a kind of weightlessness.

He reminds himself that its not a new thing. That Itachi has fallen asleep on the way to Oz many times before, and that that is why he can go now. That that is why he looks weightless. Heroin Chic indeed.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

And when it gets to be too much, he goes to school. It's a good school, on the good side of the city, and the uniform is old fashioned, but kind of elegant. He doesn't go that often though; he goes through the motions because it makes his brother happy, catches the right bus, walks down the right corridors, but he can count the number of times he's actually been to class on one hand.

Sometimes he walks through the park, the green one, built on a brown zone site. He likes to go there, if only for memory kicks. He likes to look and feel lost, because some things look familiar, but mainly it has all been cleaned up. And when he hears the emo kids snarl balefully about the Rich Kid on their turf, he feels like laughing.

But sometimes, going to the park gets to feeling a little too lost-making, because sometimes all he wants to do is retrace his steps, but he can't. After running from history so long it is a strange sort of poignancy that he wants more than anything else to be able to live there again, at least sometimes.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

And on the third day, Itachi calls.

"Hey, Sasuke…how's it going?"

"Good. Thanks."

His heart hammers in his chest, and he is unable to explain the feeling away. Unable to divulge into why he runs his fingers through his hair, self-consciously, even though he's all alone.

"That's good…" He imagines the look on his aniki's face, the regret?/disappointment?/boredom?/love? written there, and the tension in his sinewy body as he ploughs through a conversation as thick as standard board.

_And he remembers the first time he left, because his aniki was inside and he didn't like the smell (like chemicals and cologne) seeping out from under the door. So he had left,_

_And then he had run._

"So how's school?"

"Good. How's Paris?"

"It's good."

"Cool."

Some silences overflow with what we don't say. Maybe that's why they'd stopped trying.

"Listen, I was just wondering…" he begins, but then he realises his brother has already gone.

He wonders how long he has spoken into the air, the words eaten away by the cables and the distance, left floating obscurely somewhere over the sea.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

He hates his brother. Hates everything about him. The way his hair is so black that sometimes it shines bluey. That his very thinness makes him seem that much more likely to disappear again. That his angel face carved by a biological michelangelo never took account of the guilt and love that could flash up in onyx eyes.

Hates that he's got himself a boyfriend. An annoying suggestive_ fucker_ of a boyfriend, who leaves towels trailing down the hall and long golden strands of hair in the shower. Who pretends to be his friend.

The first morning Sasuke finds them in the kitchen, Itachi is mortified.

"I'm sorry, Sasuke," he tells him, and Sasuke wishes _so hard_ that he can hate his brother harder.

"Look, don't worry," he says instead, buttering toast he doesn't want over and over again. "It was a mistake, wasn't it? I should have been expecting to find you at home is all." If Itachi feels the barb he doesn't show it. And anger rises in Sasuke like a tide.

"He's…got a lot of potential as a designer, everyone wants him."

He tries for it not to sound like an excuse, but Sasuke doesn't pretend that it isn't.

He crunches his toast, (swallows the bitterness through the lemon curd) talks around it.

"Honestly, I'm cool. Don't worry. Accidents happen."

"Arigatou, otoutou." Itachi says, and the relief?/gratitude? on his face makes Sasuke want to throw up. "Thank you for understanding."

But he doesn't.

"Just next time, leave a hat on the door or something?"

He freezes. Then nods. Walks away.

Days like that, he goes to school.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

_He liked it, when Itachi sang. When Itachi came back some nights happy and sad and loving. When Itachi would take his hand and they'd dance in the park at night, and Itachi would point up at the sky and ask if they were the same._

_"You can see them, too, can't you? You're like me, aren't you? We're the same aren't we Sasuke?"_

_He couldn't see them, but he would say yes, say anything to keep his aniki happy. And sometimes it was the right answer. Sometimes Itachi would ruffle his hair and look at him with shinyness in his berry bright eyes to put the sun to shame, and say that they were rolling stones, and that they were the luckiest pair of people in the world, and Sasuke would know that it had to be true._

_And sometimes he didn't._

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Of all the students at St Bernards, it's the scholarship kids he talks to the most. This one is no exception, except that he has never been as outcasted as some of the others. Because Naruto Uzumaki is there for sport, and they worship the very ground he walks on.

"Hey, man, do you have any plans this weekend? Say Saturday night? Cos y'know Neji?"

"Hyuga corp?" It's a school where the rich and powerful send their children, and he distinguishes the majority of them by company, not by name. For a moment he allows himself to remember a house overlooking an ocean, and rooms that were light and airy and loving

_...Not a cool dark cellar where wine isn't the sweetest darkest liquid..._

The blonde boy nods.

"Yeah, him. He's having a party, and said to say you're invited. So are you coming?"

The refusal bubbles on his lips, but then he remembers that there's a Designer now.

"I'll think about it. Tell him thanks."

"Sweet."

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

The room is swimming, or maybe its him. He sways with a thousand other people, held up by the press of the mosh pit he's somehow got stuck in the middle of, somewhere between his second and eighth vodka jellies. Girls and boys he's never talked to are pressed up against him, throwing their inhibitions to the wind in an attempt to woo the quiet dark haired boy who they've only seen a handful of times, to no avail.

Sasuke is lost, and it feels good.

For a moment, the pulsing crowd loosens around him and he drifts back down to reality. And he doesn't like it. The press of people, of their sweat and vomit and perfume is holding him up as he struggles not to think, except now the press has vanished, because someone's tripped over the sound system. A round of booing ensues and Sasuke slips out of the room where the nymphs and satyrs have turned back into humans.

He winds his way through the house to the kitchen, vacated once the food ran out, and holds himself upright against the cool granite counter, not caring how his sleeve is trailing into a spill of something. Deidara will probably be pissed about his spring collection, but it's a fair exchange. Considering.

"Anything I can get you?" comes a cool voice.

He shakes his head, runs his fingers through his sweat sticky hair as the other boy comes over to him. His eyes really are a most astonishing shade of silver. He's never really noticed though. Hell, he's never even talked to this guy before now.

But, he finds himself musing, if he and his current girlfriend ever have kids, they'll be fairly astonishing to look at. BlueSilver and Silvergold. Like clouds at dawn.

_Sometimes he liked to imagine they lived in the clouds, with the cloud people that Itachi once read to him about in a lucid moment. He wonders why them? though. Why not with James and the centipede and all the other good guys?_

_"Fuck, otouto." Itachi had said, voice squeaking and booming bitterly, "Make it up there and you're okay. The peach falls out of the sky at the end."_

Neji is still looking at him, grey eyes boring through him, and he can't hold that gaze, so he doesn't. He traces the ring of a glass abandoned there, finger disrupting the browny liquid left behind.

"Listen, thanks for – " but his words are cut off. Neji is pashing him, and he doesn't know how it's happened. Neji, this guy who he's only spoken to in the last three hours is pressing his back into the cool steel handles of the kitchen drawers, and Sasuke is buoyed up again as he melts away. Until he tastes the alcohol, but he can't bear to stop it yet, so he doesn't.

When they do break apart, the pretty-boy is panting slightly, and Sasuke, too, finds that he needs to catch his breath. Neji is still looking at him, but there is a lazy shine in his eyes that Sasuke can't bear.

"Do that when you're sober and I'll be impressed." He manages to say, and then he walks away.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

He first met Orochimaru one day the school was closed, and Itachi didn't know where else to take him. The hypnotic man with the high voice, and Sasuke had wondered if he liked balloon animals. He had even asked, and received the reply that he only liked the snake ones. And they had laughed.

Sasuke had liked going there, after school, watching astro boy while he waited for Itachi. The house was always warm, and there were clean clothes. (Blue ones like the pictures on the walls, of the people he can't really see.) And Oro-chan would always be baking. A big adult cake for him and Itachi, and a little one for Sasuke. But then they stopped going.

"Stay away from him, Sasuke." His brother said, when they saw Oro-chan that last time, loitering outside the school. And it is only now, when he is older (than Itachi had been) that he recognises the anger in his aniki's voice.

And he remembers how, the next day, Itachi took him to the hospital.

The inbetween years are sort of hard to remember, a few families and yuppie couples who'd liked the look of the pretty little boy who played with his toys and didn't break them, but his silence was unnerving. And so he was sent back, perpetually, until one day, the sending-outs stopped altogether. And the winters seemed that much colder, the nights he ran away, and how far away the stars would seem. And he'd end up going back.

And then one day, Itachi came back.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

He rings, twice. Sends three texts. He doesn't leave a voicemail though, hates the idea that he can be recorded when he's that vulnerable. Mostly everyone has gone, the party having reached its peak and then ebbed off, and only the core revellers are left, and the ones who are out of it.

Naruto is passed out on a couch, his arms around a girl with hair the colour of Sakura blossoms. Hinata Hyuga, unassuming scrap of humanity that she is, has disappeared upstairs with both the vet kid and the other one.

And that's about it for the ones he recognises. Apart from Naruto, the scholarship kids have been conspicuously absent.

Neji comes over to him, hair tied back so that the angles of his cheekbones are even more striking. He hovers, waiting while Sasuke waits on the line again, picking up a few cans of woodstock as he goes. This time someone answers.

"Yeah?"

"Deidara?" Sasuke asks, because the background noise is so loud he can't tell. "Is Itachi there?" and then he recognises the sound. And ice settles in the pit of his stomach. Deidara giggles.

"He can't come to the phone right now yeah – " _you still believe in me_ " – but what can I _do for you_ Sasuke-kun?"

_I wanna cry_

"Just…tell him…don't tell him that I rang."

"Okay Sasuke-kun, I'll let him not know. Yeah."

He's made it to the door, and Neji has followed him. He knows he should say thanks, but something has made his throat go tight (And he hates his brother more-er,) and he can't say anything. Neji opens the door, but then he grabs Sasuke's arm as he makes to leave.

"Aren't you even gonna say thank you?" he asks him softly, and Sasuke sees that he's sobered up now. The tightness is still there though, so he does the only thing he feels up to.

Heart thudding, he presses his lips to the Hyuga's again. And he shakes his head. And then he leads the way to Neji's bedroom. And he's beyond caring that there's already someone passed out on the bed, as he throws off the stupid top, clinging onto Neji because otherwise he'll spin away and away and on into a moorlessness, and a nothing.

"Ino." Neji swears, and pulls Sasuke away again, down the hall, clumsily because Sasuke is still pressed flush to his body, because all his nerves have moved to his surface, to hot skin, and all he wants to do is be held by someone – anyone – so that he can feel a little less invisible.

Sasuke is lost

It doesn't feel anything

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

_The day he picked Sasuke up he couldn't help but look at him in a sort of wonder. He looked younger, cleaner, less…away? The taxi was cold, and smelled of leather and cigarettes, and seeing his brother in such an environment was something from another lifetime. He remembers the stacatto ridges of goosebumps rolling down his milky arms, and he remembers marvelling at this utterly alien familial creature, who was nearly as tall as him. He remembers that he'd promised him that it'd be awesome from then on in._

_It's the thought that counts, right?_

_But it isn't._

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Sasuke slides into the passenger seat without looking at him.

"Thanks forgetting me," he says.

In the rear view mirror, Itachi sees a curtain in a bedroom window flicker closed. He glances at his brother as the drive curves and the lush white house is lost from sight. He notices that Sasuke is wearing the collar of his jacket popped up, and a pang passes through him.

"What?" Sasuke challenges, his cheeks guilt-rosy.

On a lily pale neck Itachi sees the not-bruises, the marks of another person's affection?/lust?/hate? And something he can't feel fills him up for a second.

"That's Deidara's." He says instead.

"Sorry its messed up."

He turns the radio on, but Sasuke flicks it off again.

"I thought you liked the Beach Boys."

He shrugs.

"Guess I just don't feel like it right now."

They drive back in silence.

**/End..Story.**

**Sum of psychobabblings:**

**Gah. Sometimes I hate the way fanfiction change what formatting you're allowed/not allowed to use... As such the italics and breaks might be a bit wonky. So sorry. Anywho, Plot: **

- Itachi was a junkie, and took Sasuke along for the ride, because Something Happened to their formerly wealthy parents, (one of whom Sasuke found in the cellar) and they were all alone  
- Except for when, at the height of his using thing, Itachi was in a freaky relationship deal with Orochimaru. Except hash cakes is barely scratching the surface, hence the wizard of oz – and kate moss – and chem cologne and rolling stone allusion/reference thingies. Oh and the picasso one too.  
- The beach boys thing is because that was the italicised bit in Sasuke and Deidara's conversation, and Sasuke (rightly) associated it with a music enhancing trip, so he turned them off the next day.

Any annoying things bugging you i haven't explained then ask. Correct my spelling if it's wrong if you want. Syntax is usually deliberate, but w/e.

**Disclaimer: I don't own the rights to Naruto, nor any of the references in this. It'd be a really bad idea to sue me, anyways. We keep the wolf from the door, but he calls us up. Like, every coupla days.**

Cheers for reading x0x0x Gare de Lyon


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